Deep Impact Parent Guide

Streaking toward us is a Mount Everest-sized meteor. There is only one hope of saving the planet: Send a spacecraft to land on the meteor, plant an arsenal of warheads deep into its surface, and push the rock off its course.

Parent Movie Reviewby Rod Gustafson

Earth has one year to live. Streaking toward us is a Mount Everest-sized meteor. There is only one hope of saving the planet: Send a spacecraft to land on the meteor, plant an arsenal of warheads deep into its surface, and push the rock off its course. But even a confident U.S. President (Morgan Freeman) shows signs of doubt regarding the plan. So what will humanity do with one year to live?

This impending disaster film is filled with the usual characters. Government officials, super-intelligent children who become separated from parents, elderly people who will become victims of the inevitable, and a news anchor with family situations she must settle but whose real job in the film is to tell us the story. But Deep Impact’s writers are able to manage all of these people and a very complex story in just two hours.

Unfortunately, these writers also made decisions that may make some parents reluctant to have this movie land in their family room. The language includes mild profanities and terms of Deity, as well as two unnecessary uses of a sexual expletive (according to MPAA information, a PG-13 movie can only contain one use of this term).

Even with the earth’s predicted doom just months away, when the comet’s young discoverer (played by Elijah Wood) makes a presentation at his high school a classmate stands up tall and loud and claims that the best thing about being famous is that ?you will have sex a lot more than anyone else now.? Fortunately this point isn’t proven in the film.

Anyone who has seen the preview for this film knows the comet hits the earth with millions of implied deaths, but violence is limited to shots of people running, and buildings tumbling under the tidal wave. However, language and dialogue may prohibit young people from seeing an otherwise exciting and at times, inspiring, movie. After all, how often today do we hear a president expressing his belief in God and encouraging citizens to pray? Only in the movies…

About author

Rod Gustafson has worked in various media industries since 1977. He founded Parent Previews in 1993, and today continues to write and broadcast the reviews in newspapers, on radio and (of course) on the Internet. His efforts also include writing and researching media in all its forms and observing how it effects society and culture. He and his wife Donna have four children.